Friday, 23 October 2009

University FAIL!

I'm still not going to tell you what I do for a job. It's no secret that I used to be a teaching assistant and it's also no secret that I'm currently "in training" at a university for a job which pays more. Doesn't take a genius to work out what it is if you read my blog or tweets.

Not that I enjoy it or approve of the way it's taught or anything. I have to point out that the university I'm at is one of the really good ones. You know, one of those Top 20, Top 15, even Top 10 stalwarts. One of those really old ones that appears to be falling apart because they haven't got around to replacing the bricks yet. It's a far cry from the last university I went to, the one wherein I actually did a proper degree, since that was a post-1994 university. A fresh conversion from polytechnic to uniersity did that place a world of good and, while I didn't like that either, I'll admit that their courses - in my third year especially - were excellently run.

Came out of there with a good enough degree, too.

Take that, current university!

One of the courses we are doing at the moment is mostly run online, with the lecturer in charge of the course assuming in all good faith that you're reading through the material. That's an incredibly lazy way of running a course, akin to sticking someone on an Open University module and waiting for the results. Anyway, I've made my point to many tutors and nobody's listening. Fuck 'em.

Sexual issues were advertised on the module sheet for this time last week and I was - pleasantly - surprised. I didn't even think sex would be covered, but it's a very important part of life and I was expecting a quick lecture about sex and its impact on our, ahem, future "client group". After all, I gave a presentation last week in which I openly talked about sex for about ten minutes during which I only paused for laughs, so I assumed this would be an open and relaxed encounter in which the points were all covered quicky and concisely.

Unfortunately, it turned out to be one of the online things to reads through, with boring articles to look at and an equally boring quiz about sexual issues, which hardly mentioned sex at all and used very Bowdlerised language to gloss over the issues. Okay, so I wasn't expecting a raw, erotic and graphic description of all things carnal, but surely... surely... they could have given us something better> Or at least a lecture? I mean, this is important!

New life ambition: qualify, work, and once a year, return to this hellhole of a university (or perhaps a nicer one) and give a much-needed one-hour lecture on sexual issues. I mean, I could probably do it right now if you asked.